A primary objective of locomotive rehabilitation may be to restore a subject's strength and retrain the subject to walk in a natural gait cycle, under their own power. An exemplary locomotive rehabilitation subject may lack sufficient strength (e.g., in their legs, feet, core, etc.) to move their extremities through a normal gait cycle. Alternatively, or in addition, an exemplary subject may lack sufficient coordination to correctly position and direct their extremities through a gait cycle. For example, a stroke patient may experience muscle weakness and diminished coordination in their legs, and, thus, may be incapable of walking under their own power. Previous approaches to providing locomotive rehabilitation have attempted to address strength and coordination issues via multiple machines that may iteratively progress a subject through a locomotive rehabilitation program. For example, a subject may use a wheelchair and, at an initial phase of a rehabilitation program, may use locomotive rehabilitation systems and machines designed exclusively for use by wheelchair-confined subjects. Such systems and machines may operate only in a seated configuration and, thus, may be unsuitable for training a standing subject. In the same example, the subject may, at a certain phase of their program, be capable of standing and, thus, may be directed to proceed with locomotive rehabilitation via systems and machines designed only for operation by a standing subject.
In the above example, the subject required at least two systems or machines to experience locomotive rehabilitation. Because locomotive rehabilitation systems and may be costly, previous solutions that require multiple systems may be prohibitively expensive for both patients and care providers. In addition, locomotive rehabilitation systems may occupy a large space and, thus, a care provider may be unable to provide a full and necessary spectrum of rehabilitation systems, because they lack the space to house each system. Accordingly, there exists a long-felt, but unmet need for a single locomotive rehabilitation system that provides locomotive rehabilitation in both standing and seated positions.
In addition, an exemplary locomotive rehabilitation subject may lack sufficient strength to support their full weight in a standing position; however, they may have sufficient strength to support a portion of their weight in a standing position. Previous approaches to locomotive rehabilitation fail to provide apparatuses and/or mechanisms that allow a subject to receive locomotive rehabilitation in a standing position supporting a less than total portion of their weight. Accordingly, there exists a long-felt, but unmet need for a locomotive rehabilitation system that allows a subject to perform locomotive rehabilitation exercises in a standing position and while supporting only a portion of their total weight.